Like a cloud that has held it's rain so long it can no longer keep the moisture and drenches the earth and the people and the animals in a deluge of drops, so has this last ten days been raining blessings. Showers of blessings have been falling to my delight and awe. One after the other, issues which I had long considered impossible have burst into thoroughly quenched and nourishing possibilities.
How appropriate this should happen in a month when the tag 'April Showers...' is so often used.
I have been so thirsty that my heart towards heavenward the way my mouth would if this were physical parchment. I keep my heart open and chant to myself, "I like to receive, I like to receive!"
That is my chocolate epiphany this year. Each year, but one, in the last decade I have chosen to give up all forms of chocolate for my act of Lenten contemplative practice. It may seem silly, but chocolate really is my drug of choice. Every day I eat some healthy from of it; dark, 76% or more, but nonetheless, chocolate. And each year God has honored my deprivation with an astounding , desert Mother like epiphany. This year, I heard in my heart that I needed to learn to like receiving.
Realizing to me that receiving has always contained a bit of shame and/or guilt that I should have some need or require some act of charity was astounding. For the last two decades I have been so dependent on others and could not figure out why the Lord would make me carry such a burden. But the minute I felt one small twinkle of 'like' in my spirit when someone blessed me, blessings poured forth and he Graced me with so many opportunities for self sufficiency I find myself working at double time to keep up with taking advantage and making the most of all of them. I wake up at 2AM excited for the days work ahead and will myself back into the sleep my body needs. There is an intense look on my face, I'm sure, but my heart has a big ol' smile on it.
Now, when someone blesses me I say thank you with nothing but gratitude. There is no inner dialogue of 'please God don't let me need so much'.
It reminds me of when Catherine Marshall, the wife of Peter Marshall who was the chaplain of the US senate, and was such a spiritual powerhouse herself, was fighting, trying to heal from Tuberculosis. It lingered and lingered and lingered until at last one day she said, "Lord, if I have this forever it's OK" and bingo. Healed almost instantly.
And after we have such a more dimensional understanding of surrender and humility and more so God's enormous benevolence and love for us.
Amen...more, more, more. May it be so for you as well.....
Love,
Deborah
Friday, April 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Tuesday News
This Tuesday morning finds me feeling the Peace and Grace of God in ways that allow me to focus on the tasks at hand in the midst of a storm of controversy at the outer perimeters of my life. I have waited a lifetime to learn how to do this.
Growing up in an incredibly dysfunctional home, I was always thoroughly distracted by the sturm und drang of people around me who were just miserable and had no hesitancy to either show it or project it onto me, or share it in violent and demeaning ways.
Yet now, finally, in 2013, I am in the middle of a bunch of people who are having an angry, violent time and I am just smooth sailing. Ah me! I am so happy to have learned this skill.
It is an internal skill. It takes the renewing of your mind of the things of God that are eternal and deep and meaningful in a larger perspective. It is a skill that requires one to carefully stay connected to the external. One must also stay connected to one's emotions and physical state.
I've turned the heat off for Spring and Summer and the little bit of chill to the air helps me stay just a bit more alert. I've made some chicken soup ...homemade...and the matzo meal is in the fridge ready to be made into balls to drop into the delicious liquid that this time will be better because a friend, a very good cook who happens to be a 'y' chromosome ...male...gave me the tip of sauteing my veggies before I add them to the liquid. He also told me tarragon is the spice of choice.
Additionally for the first time I can involve myself in creative and technical aspects of writing all the while knowing there is this tornado of anger in the center of others.
I have done this. I have translated the skills I use everyday with infants, children, tweens and teens ...for adults! Yea! Hallelujah!! Freedom to 'be' under and in any circumstance!!!
One of my clients asked me what maturity is. It is this, as I have always shared, 'to feel one way and act another'. But this today I can also pass on. The definition of 'healed' is to keep your peace, maintain it, enjoy it and walk in it, while others are gnashing teeth and filled with heated emotions.
Well... I think that merits a 'Praise God'! For another time...how I got there :)
Love,
Deborah
Growing up in an incredibly dysfunctional home, I was always thoroughly distracted by the sturm und drang of people around me who were just miserable and had no hesitancy to either show it or project it onto me, or share it in violent and demeaning ways.
Yet now, finally, in 2013, I am in the middle of a bunch of people who are having an angry, violent time and I am just smooth sailing. Ah me! I am so happy to have learned this skill.
It is an internal skill. It takes the renewing of your mind of the things of God that are eternal and deep and meaningful in a larger perspective. It is a skill that requires one to carefully stay connected to the external. One must also stay connected to one's emotions and physical state.
I've turned the heat off for Spring and Summer and the little bit of chill to the air helps me stay just a bit more alert. I've made some chicken soup ...homemade...and the matzo meal is in the fridge ready to be made into balls to drop into the delicious liquid that this time will be better because a friend, a very good cook who happens to be a 'y' chromosome ...male...gave me the tip of sauteing my veggies before I add them to the liquid. He also told me tarragon is the spice of choice.
Additionally for the first time I can involve myself in creative and technical aspects of writing all the while knowing there is this tornado of anger in the center of others.
I have done this. I have translated the skills I use everyday with infants, children, tweens and teens ...for adults! Yea! Hallelujah!! Freedom to 'be' under and in any circumstance!!!
One of my clients asked me what maturity is. It is this, as I have always shared, 'to feel one way and act another'. But this today I can also pass on. The definition of 'healed' is to keep your peace, maintain it, enjoy it and walk in it, while others are gnashing teeth and filled with heated emotions.
Well... I think that merits a 'Praise God'! For another time...how I got there :)
Love,
Deborah
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Fits and Start
They say that most people quit their blogging sooner rather than later and so it has been a goal of mine since I began these blogs to never quit. I'm not a quitter. A slow bloomer, a slow and steady wins the race, a never say die, certainly that I am. But a quitter? Never.
I know there is another pace of life. There are those who are driven and push through despite their health needs or family needs or personal desires for something other, but I cannot keep that pace.
It used to be I would quote this quote that I thought most profound. It goes like this: "There's no such word as the word 'can't'; either you don't know how or you don't want to, and usually it's the latter.
Then in 1991 I got to 'can't'. Full stop. I had so many toxic relationships in my life I couldn't breathe or move or feel any joy or happiness. I'd begun to measure my life in terms of 'doing' instead of 'being'. I needed to be me.
Unfortunately being me wasn't an option because I was serving the needs of so many people who had absolutely empty buckets. No, let me put that another way. Their buckets had holes in them that meant what ever was poured into them quickly leaked out.
I went to this soothsayer in the early eighties when I was taking everyone's advise but my own and she said something about how I was in the middle of a prairie and the wagon was broken and I was completely reconstructing my life.
Now I don't much believe in soothsayers and I only went to that one because this supposedly good Christian pastor friend of mine went to him and said even his mother, who was a Bible Study Fellowship leader, went to her, so I figured it was spiritually safe.
I discarded the past life stuff and re-framed it into her picking up on what was deeper in me I hadn't discovered, but two things stood out. The one I want to share is the one about taking my part a life. I actually just surrendered to God. Following the Holy Spirit, which I was really lousy at when I started to identify the process, I did what I was lead to do.
Last week, lo and behold, I picked up a book that had seemed revolutionary to me, at one time, about women who please men and the men who take advantage of them and it was like some distant irrelevant foreign language that I was so beyond I couldn't remember what it felt like to be in that place when I first read it.
It's been thirty years since I started that process. I've had moments when I was intensely into the change and moments when, because I was just trying to survive, I was doing it unconsciously . But continue I did.
It doesn't matter what culture or society we live in, we need to keep the internal journey progressing. We need to open ourselves up to that process. Distracted as we may be by the logistics and execution of daily life, we need to keep evolving spiritually and emotionally.
That's all for today, I guess. Make more of the day than presents itself to be made.
Love,
Deborah
I know there is another pace of life. There are those who are driven and push through despite their health needs or family needs or personal desires for something other, but I cannot keep that pace.
It used to be I would quote this quote that I thought most profound. It goes like this: "There's no such word as the word 'can't'; either you don't know how or you don't want to, and usually it's the latter.
Then in 1991 I got to 'can't'. Full stop. I had so many toxic relationships in my life I couldn't breathe or move or feel any joy or happiness. I'd begun to measure my life in terms of 'doing' instead of 'being'. I needed to be me.
Unfortunately being me wasn't an option because I was serving the needs of so many people who had absolutely empty buckets. No, let me put that another way. Their buckets had holes in them that meant what ever was poured into them quickly leaked out.
I went to this soothsayer in the early eighties when I was taking everyone's advise but my own and she said something about how I was in the middle of a prairie and the wagon was broken and I was completely reconstructing my life.
Now I don't much believe in soothsayers and I only went to that one because this supposedly good Christian pastor friend of mine went to him and said even his mother, who was a Bible Study Fellowship leader, went to her, so I figured it was spiritually safe.
I discarded the past life stuff and re-framed it into her picking up on what was deeper in me I hadn't discovered, but two things stood out. The one I want to share is the one about taking my part a life. I actually just surrendered to God. Following the Holy Spirit, which I was really lousy at when I started to identify the process, I did what I was lead to do.
Last week, lo and behold, I picked up a book that had seemed revolutionary to me, at one time, about women who please men and the men who take advantage of them and it was like some distant irrelevant foreign language that I was so beyond I couldn't remember what it felt like to be in that place when I first read it.
It's been thirty years since I started that process. I've had moments when I was intensely into the change and moments when, because I was just trying to survive, I was doing it unconsciously . But continue I did.
It doesn't matter what culture or society we live in, we need to keep the internal journey progressing. We need to open ourselves up to that process. Distracted as we may be by the logistics and execution of daily life, we need to keep evolving spiritually and emotionally.
That's all for today, I guess. Make more of the day than presents itself to be made.
Love,
Deborah
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Under the Tree
It's only been an hour since she invited me in. "Come under the tree Deborah!"
We have not played with each other since August and she went off to kindergarten. Before that we were almost daily friends from the time she was a baby.
My unspoken hesitations were numerous and well reasoned. I knew they all needed to remain unspoken. This was an invitation born of whimsy, and whimsy was/is the strongest bond between us.
Pulling up the ottoman as close as I could I sat, and then lowered my aging body to the edges of branches that smelled of fresh forest.
The ever favoured monkey pillows were carefully laid underneath. She lay waiting for me. "Come on Deborah, you can do it!"
I lay on my side putting my face fully underneath.
It was , as she had promised, magical. Lights and decorations look more beautiful and iridescent from the underside of the boughs.
"Oh there's the magenta one you told me about , "I exclaimed in genuine awe. It was like looking through the mist of Christmas promise. And there was amber, although she would call it yellow, and blue, and green, and then duplicates of each near her side.
You will be busy the next few weeks. Remember to lay down under the Christmas tree. It will show the reason for the season, the other dimension to which Jesus referred. The bigger picture for which Jesus was born.
Love,
Deborah
We have not played with each other since August and she went off to kindergarten. Before that we were almost daily friends from the time she was a baby.
My unspoken hesitations were numerous and well reasoned. I knew they all needed to remain unspoken. This was an invitation born of whimsy, and whimsy was/is the strongest bond between us.
Pulling up the ottoman as close as I could I sat, and then lowered my aging body to the edges of branches that smelled of fresh forest.
The ever favoured monkey pillows were carefully laid underneath. She lay waiting for me. "Come on Deborah, you can do it!"
I lay on my side putting my face fully underneath.
It was , as she had promised, magical. Lights and decorations look more beautiful and iridescent from the underside of the boughs.
"Oh there's the magenta one you told me about , "I exclaimed in genuine awe. It was like looking through the mist of Christmas promise. And there was amber, although she would call it yellow, and blue, and green, and then duplicates of each near her side.
You will be busy the next few weeks. Remember to lay down under the Christmas tree. It will show the reason for the season, the other dimension to which Jesus referred. The bigger picture for which Jesus was born.
Love,
Deborah
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Winter Views
If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, this is not well timed. But if you are in the Northern half then the trees are finishing their defoliation and everywhere is.... the winter view....
I don't notice how the view disappears in summer until suddenly the water, the neighbor's yard, vast expanses are viewable in more panoramic ways than the lush green of Spring and Summer prevents.
Since winter is historically a great time for reflection and drawing in and thinking quiet warm thoughts = well, after the holidays= it's good to draw the parallel further and wonder what is underneath our industry, our busyness, our 'foliage'.
And how can I write such a profound thought that requires some seated and surrendered contemplation on a day when I am dashing faster than the hours and minutes can pass?
Irony....yet still great Truth...
Love,
Deborah
I don't notice how the view disappears in summer until suddenly the water, the neighbor's yard, vast expanses are viewable in more panoramic ways than the lush green of Spring and Summer prevents.
Since winter is historically a great time for reflection and drawing in and thinking quiet warm thoughts = well, after the holidays= it's good to draw the parallel further and wonder what is underneath our industry, our busyness, our 'foliage'.
And how can I write such a profound thought that requires some seated and surrendered contemplation on a day when I am dashing faster than the hours and minutes can pass?
Irony....yet still great Truth...
Love,
Deborah
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Thanksgiving
What a weird Thanksgiving. I'm housesitting in the place I've always referred to as 'my dream house' and have done so enough to not think of it that way anymore. My children are all busy elsewhere and so I'm really kind of alone. And the winds and storms are rolling in with a ferocity that is wearying.
And I am in transition...again...oh my......
Today I looked up a particular set of retirement locations and thought about the glory of living on a fixed income.
Oh wow...this must still be part of that feeling tired thing...that exhaustion I was going through a couple of weeks ago.
Just as weirdly, an odd experience has pulled me out of going to an emotional circle around the drain.
I put on my winter coat and.....oh....my....gosh.....!!! I can zip it all the way up comfortably. I can feel space around my middle when I wear it. I can wear it when I'm driving and feel comfortable. I can reach for the parking brake release and not have to make sure I'm not sitting on my coat.!!!!
Since last Spring I've been talking about this twenty five pounds I was losing this year and = stunned silence and a moment of pause= I did it.
Dozens of little changes to which I attributed other causes are now clearly because I lost weight!!!!
So I said to friend in knitting, I'm so encouraged I'm going to do more...and she said....
"Why don't you just do the same?"
Is that not the most astoundingly simple good advice? SO that's my goal for this year, to keep doing what I'm doing and lose twenty five more pounds. I'm so excited. What a great way to move into the holiday season.
Thank you ,Thank you ,Thank you, God for the results from many small changes. Ii have learned that small changes make a BIG difference! And so it goes......
Happy Thanksgiving.
Love,
Deborah
And I am in transition...again...oh my......
Today I looked up a particular set of retirement locations and thought about the glory of living on a fixed income.
Oh wow...this must still be part of that feeling tired thing...that exhaustion I was going through a couple of weeks ago.
Just as weirdly, an odd experience has pulled me out of going to an emotional circle around the drain.
I put on my winter coat and.....oh....my....gosh.....!!! I can zip it all the way up comfortably. I can feel space around my middle when I wear it. I can wear it when I'm driving and feel comfortable. I can reach for the parking brake release and not have to make sure I'm not sitting on my coat.!!!!
Since last Spring I've been talking about this twenty five pounds I was losing this year and = stunned silence and a moment of pause= I did it.
Dozens of little changes to which I attributed other causes are now clearly because I lost weight!!!!
So I said to friend in knitting, I'm so encouraged I'm going to do more...and she said....
"Why don't you just do the same?"
Is that not the most astoundingly simple good advice? SO that's my goal for this year, to keep doing what I'm doing and lose twenty five more pounds. I'm so excited. What a great way to move into the holiday season.
Thank you ,Thank you ,Thank you, God for the results from many small changes. Ii have learned that small changes make a BIG difference! And so it goes......
Happy Thanksgiving.
Love,
Deborah
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The End of Exhaustion
It didn't get better. Exhaustion set in on Thursday and by Saturday I was rejoicing that I could move from the couch where I listened to NPR's "Car Talk" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" to the red Ikea chair in the den/crafts room with the big TV and watch "It Happened to Jane" with Doris Day and Jack Lemmon. My muscles simply were not feeling in any way replenished. My spirit felt as if it was held hostage by some supernatural force of the Universe like electromagnetics or maybe the Sun's rays. All I could do was submit and surrender, watch movies from the library, listen to "Prairie Home Companion" and knit, slowly, slower than I ever had. My hands ached from the inside.
I had become worried the day before when I suspected I would 'snap out of it'. No such luck. Had I wrecked myself beyond all measure I wondered?
I had an event to host that I was sponsoring on Sunday and all I could day as Saturday afternoon turned into Saturday evening was pray that on Sunday there would be enough of me on the inside of myself that I could drive the car seven miles into town and fake it for two hours.
Much to my surprise I slept between fitful wakings, returning to sleep right away after I changed position. And without benefit of alarm I rose at 7 and moved about with ease and some lightness in my Spirit. I was able to shower and and prep myself in feminine ways, and moreso, wanted to add the bits of colour and curl that tell the world I have a double xx DNA.
When I returned I could still function without immediately dropping into a dead heap on the couch once more.
Monday was the holiday and I slept until ten against my better judgement. I realized there was something fresh in my Spirit. Perhaps God had allowed me to lay fallow in the only way I would allow that to happen, with everything I had on my plate. As the afternoon wore on, I began to realize I was not going to push it to do chores in a rush that plagued my vision with chaos. I was going to journal. Thus I did for hours, and in between I made a list of what kind of lifestyle I would have to live if I was going to proceed with greater caution and be more measured in my choices of the use of time and talents. I went through my daily schedule, a new one again, changed by a client's variations in their schedule and wrote out a consistant pattern of self care.
And then I reread the entire journal I had in my hand. There are only a few pages left and it has, oddly enough, taken three years to fill it all. I have not been a prolific writer in said journal. But I did record the highlights that were too important to pass by in time and history unremarkably.
I discovered this last three years had been a time of intense purging of old tired energy that kept the new vision and desires for my life as I responded to God's calling from growing into maturity.
Like 1991 when I had lost my faith for twelve weeks for the first time in my life only to arise one more feeling more fully restored and faith filled than ever, God had pressed me against concentric circles of busyness and had his way with my Spirit. Today, I began in new ways that are more life affirming than ever I have had and will lead to the fulfillment of every called task I have left unfinished or undone.
Sometimes you just have to let God have his way with your Spirit by his Spirit and submit and surrender. Therein is the Joy.
Love,
Deborah
I had become worried the day before when I suspected I would 'snap out of it'. No such luck. Had I wrecked myself beyond all measure I wondered?
I had an event to host that I was sponsoring on Sunday and all I could day as Saturday afternoon turned into Saturday evening was pray that on Sunday there would be enough of me on the inside of myself that I could drive the car seven miles into town and fake it for two hours.
Much to my surprise I slept between fitful wakings, returning to sleep right away after I changed position. And without benefit of alarm I rose at 7 and moved about with ease and some lightness in my Spirit. I was able to shower and and prep myself in feminine ways, and moreso, wanted to add the bits of colour and curl that tell the world I have a double xx DNA.
When I returned I could still function without immediately dropping into a dead heap on the couch once more.
Monday was the holiday and I slept until ten against my better judgement. I realized there was something fresh in my Spirit. Perhaps God had allowed me to lay fallow in the only way I would allow that to happen, with everything I had on my plate. As the afternoon wore on, I began to realize I was not going to push it to do chores in a rush that plagued my vision with chaos. I was going to journal. Thus I did for hours, and in between I made a list of what kind of lifestyle I would have to live if I was going to proceed with greater caution and be more measured in my choices of the use of time and talents. I went through my daily schedule, a new one again, changed by a client's variations in their schedule and wrote out a consistant pattern of self care.
And then I reread the entire journal I had in my hand. There are only a few pages left and it has, oddly enough, taken three years to fill it all. I have not been a prolific writer in said journal. But I did record the highlights that were too important to pass by in time and history unremarkably.
I discovered this last three years had been a time of intense purging of old tired energy that kept the new vision and desires for my life as I responded to God's calling from growing into maturity.
Like 1991 when I had lost my faith for twelve weeks for the first time in my life only to arise one more feeling more fully restored and faith filled than ever, God had pressed me against concentric circles of busyness and had his way with my Spirit. Today, I began in new ways that are more life affirming than ever I have had and will lead to the fulfillment of every called task I have left unfinished or undone.
Sometimes you just have to let God have his way with your Spirit by his Spirit and submit and surrender. Therein is the Joy.
Love,
Deborah
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